By popular demand, sisters now sharing their skin-care products with all of Wichita

UPDATED — For years, sisters Brittany and Jessica Gray have been carrying on a family tradition by creating their own products to take care of their skin and fight illnesses.

Now, they’re sharing what they’ve learned with the rest of the world — or at least Wichita.

Their new OwnU’Style sells skin-care products and fragrant oils among other things.

“We say we are sisters doing creative healing,” Brittany Gray said.

She and her sister said their grandmothers and great-grandmothers passed down to them how to practice natural healing with herbs instead of medication.

So they started mixing their own remedies, skin-care products and scents.

“Just over the years we’ve always basically created our own products to use just for ourselves,” Jessica Gray said.

She said friends and family members “would always be like, ‘What do you guys use on your face?’ ”

They’ve opened OwnU’Style at 2200 E. Central, just west of Grove.

In addition to skin-care products, they sell perfume.

“And you can create your own,” Jessica Gray said.

Customers can customize scents with individual oils.

“So it lasts longer as well,” Jessica Gray said.

“Oil tends to linger . . . where alcohol evaporates the fragrance,” Brittany Gray said.

The East Central address, which Michael Moeder of Moeder & Associates helped them find, also is where they’ll operate their other two businesses.

Brittany Gray, who has been a licensed aesthetician for six years, owns A Queen’s Face.

“I do natural skin care (and) customized facials.”

That includes scalp micropigmentation to help people who are balding.

She said she plans to get into lip tinting, too.

Jessica Gray, who has been doing accounting for about two decades, also is a certified doula.

Her own experience along with that of other Black and Brown women made her want to open Rhythms 2 Birth, she said.

“Especially for Brown and Black people, the death rate for giving birth is really high.”

She said it’s the same for babies.

“It’s something that really touched my heart as well. I really would like to be of service to others. . . . It’s really rewarding for me, and it’s something I love to do.”

The Gray sisters said they’ve had their differences through the years, but they said they’ve also learned from their entrepreneurial family members about the importance of working things out.

“Sometimes you have to disagree to agree,” Brittany Gray said.

“They taught us to stick together regardless of your differences. It’s been instilled in us since birth.”

There will be a grand opening of OwnU’Style on Aug. 24.

Locating in what Brittany Gray said is an area with a lot of Black and Brown people was important to the sisters so customers “didn’t necessarily have to go out of their comfort zone.”

The two also hope to be “a motivation to the community as well,” she said.

Jessica Gray said she and her sister liked that the space they chose was a blank canvas.

“It was something that we could go in and make our own.”

Much like their store name touts, she said, “We can basically own this space.”

This story was originally published August 12, 2024 at 4:17 AM.